posted 10-09-2022 12:33 PM               

Space Cover 671: Teacher-in-Space, Part 2

Back on February 10, 2013, my SCOTW #200 (here) concerned NASA's Teacher-in-Space project, which planned to have the first private citizen and school teacher to fly in space on the Space Shuttle. As we all know, that goal ended in tragedy, with teacher Christa McAuliffe perishing along with the entire crew aboard Challenger on STS-51L.

SCOTW #200 presented ten individual covers autographed by each of the ten Teacher-in-Space Finalists. These ten finalists were selected from a total of 114 candidates from all 50 states and US territories, etc.

To continue now with the Teacher-in-Space project, I have shown a cacheted cover with the Teacher-in-Space emblem. The other cover is autographed by all ten Teacher-in-Space Finalists all together. This was accomplished by mailing two covers to the Finalists at NASA HQs while there for training. Nine of the ten signed, while one missed the opportunity, but nicely signed when sent to her at her high school and then back in time to have sent to KSC for launch cancel.

Later I continued my Teacher-in-Space autograph quest. In 1998 and then much later in 2013, I sent covers and cards to about 40 of the other semi-finalists I could find possible addresses for. This effort was late in starting but 29 of the semi-finalists did respond well, so my years of efforts resulted in autographs of the ten Finalists, along with autographs of 29 of the semi-finalists, totaling autographs of 39 of the 114 - about 1/3 of the total.

Above is a cover signed by semi-finalist Gordon Corbett, along with an interesting note from him that will serve as examples of the nice responses I received from the T-in-S Finalists and semi-finalists. It was an enjoyable and rewarding project but could have been much more successful with an earlier and more continuous effort.